Prisoners’ experiences and coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic response: an ethnographic study conducted mid-pandemic

Purpose – This paper aims to report findings about how prisoners experience and cope with COVID-19 restrictions, which can contribute to an understanding of how pandemic responses, and specifically the COVID-19response, affect prisoners. Design/methodology/approach – Data was collected through ethnographic fieldwork involving days of observations (N = 24) and the conduction of semi-structured interviews with prisoners (N = 30) in closed prisons and detentions in Denmark between May and December 2021. The transcribed interviews and fieldnoteswereprocessedandcodedbyusingthesoftwareprogrammeNVivo. Findings – The data analysis reveals that the pains of imprisonment have been exacerbated to people incarcerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. To relieve pains of imprisonment, prisoners turn to censoriousness as an informal coping strategy, where they complain about inconsistency and injustice in the prison’s COVID-19prevention strategy to reveal the prison system itself as a rule-breaking institution. The prisoners criticise the prison management for using COVID-19 as an excuse, treating prisoners unjustly or not upholding the COVID-19 rules and human rights. Furthermore, principles of justice and equality are also alleged by some prisoners who contemplate the difficulty in treating all prisoners the same.Research limitations/implications – More research will be needed to create a full picture of how prisoners cope with pandemic responses. Further research could include interviews with people working inside prisons. Originality/value – In a Scandinavian context, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to apply an ethnographic approach in exploring prison lifeduringtheCOVID-19pandemic. 
Keywords COVID-19, Prisons, The pains of imprisonment, Censoriousness, Prison ethnography, Qualitative prison research, Infectious disease